When stripped of volatile items such as power and food costs, the inflation rate has been hovering closer to 3.5 percent.

In fact, once those one-off pressures subside, Citibank economists expect inflation to end 2018 at 4.3 percent before falling to 4.25 percent in 2019 — the exact midpoint of the central bank’s target range for that year.

The IPCA, scheduled for Wednesday at 9:00 a.m. local time (1100 GMT), likely rose 0.55 percent from October, the survey showed. BRCPI=ECI

Such a result would largely confirm the central bank’s assessment that monetary policy ought to remain loose and allow it to hold off from hiking in the short-term.

The victory of far-right lawmaker Jair Bolsonaro in the presidential election, embraced by investors as a sign that belt-tightening reforms are coming soon, also reduced the risk of a currency selloff that could bump up import costs and wider inflation.